Great Ways to Use Instagram’s API

September 19, 2013

Instagram has become the most important social platform for photo and video sharing. Recently Instagram releases a series of APIs to allow for its serves to be even more integrated with its member’s daily lives. While there are a variety of ways to implement Instagram’s core features, here are several exciting ways to work with their API.

Search with Tags – Instagram now offers the ability to search and use images based on hashtags. Searching tags and having real time updates can add exciting content to an user experience and extend the use of not only your images but content specific images and video.

Use Photos on Websites – Through the use of their API Instagram now allows users to post photos or a photostream on a website. The photos can come from a specific account, or from tags. Users can create a gallery of images or have a photostream update automatically as pictures are added.

Share Photos from Specific Locations in Real Time – By using Instagram’s API to search for geotags, images and video can be viewed in real time. This is a great function if you want to publish trends in different location or watch events as they unfold.

Publish Trending Photos – Instrgram’s API now allows users to pull the most popular or trending photos from Instagram. This works well for companies that want to see if their products are trending well. It is also valuable for analysis, to see what types of photos do well or which users are especially popular.

Make Custom Items – It is now possible to put images directly on eBook covers, phone cases, and more. Since the API allows you to pull entire photo feeds, users can use images to easily make custom-decorated items or order them directly from the source.

Market Events and Brands – Use the Instagram API to pull photos with hashtags and geotags from specific brand or tags so brands can see how their products are being used. Venue owners can use photos of customers enjoying events at their locations. Instagram’s API is also being used as a marketing tool to sell products by asking customers to tag photos and selecting their favorites to use for promotion. There are also services that pull photos for information on products and events.

Create Live Feeds – With the Instagram API, event organizers can pull photos with event-specific tags and display them onscreen in real time, for instance used it during a concert to show fan photos taken during the performance.

Ironpaper is a results-driven digital marketing agency. Ironpaper integrates design, technology and marketing for the web to drive meaningful results for clients. We are based in New York City and Charlotte, NC.